December 17, 2012
I'd like to buy some guns, but...
I have no interest whatsoever in supporting the NRA or its friends.
There's never a good time to talk about guns, but the worst times seem like the most important times.
We've talked about hunting since we bought the land above our house, which isn't large but is large enough and is often well-stocked with deer. The spread of feral hogs also concerns me, and puts me across the tipping point where I think having a gun would be a good idea.
Visiting deer, 2011.
(We already have a BB gun, which lives in a gun cabinet in the attic, where it should stay out of the hands of our kids. Any future guns would live there as well.)
The problem isn't the devices - we pretty much know that we'd like a .22 and a 20-gauge shotgun (with some thoughts about a 12-gauge if the feral pigs become more common).
The problem is with the makers of the guns, and ammunition, and the surrounding culture. I don't want to make a donation to the NRA every time I buy shells, and I don't have the time to take up loading my own.
A Remington shotgun made in Ilion, NY, not far from here, would seem like an obvious answer, but then I read articles like this and remember the company's constant tantrums about ripping the factory out of New York State if we do anything else that might discourage the use of guns on humans. It's hard to support local manufacturing when they're run by jerks who seem to think that protecting human targets from their weapons is a bad idea. (I've heard better things about the employees, but management... not so much.)
Are there any manufacturers who produce quality guns but aren't locked into the broken logic of "the only answer to gun shootings is more guns"? Is this even imaginable in the current gun culture?
Ideally they'd be in the United States, focus exclusively on weapons for hunting, and steer clear of the NRA, the NSSF, and similar forces.
Used is of course another option, though that doesn't work so well for ammunition.
Posted by simon at December 17, 2012 3:41 PM inNote on photos
Considered blackpowder? Lots of stuff out there made by defunct companies or individual smiths. A little more challenging to use then modern stuff, but that might a good thing.....
The NRA is unfortunately tied very closely to the gun and ammo manufacturers. It practically operates as a trade group. This makes it very hard to find manufacturers which stay away from it.
For ammunition, I'd start with getting lead-free bullets; the NRA is (consistent with their insanity) fanatically pro-lead, so any manufacturer which makes lead-free bullets is already bucking the NRA to some extent.
For guns, there are an awful lot of really small specialty manufacturers. Unfortunately, most of their owners are still nutty NRA members. You may be better off with European imports.
For training, there are organizations which are older than the NRA and not directly affiliated with the NRA, although there's still grossly excessive membership overlap. None of these organizations are national, however, which makes them hard to find. The National Hunters and Shooters Association was, of course, attacked by the murderous psychopaths at the NRA-ILA and failed to gain traction.
Furthermore, the toxic and psychotic culture perpetrated by the NRA makes it hard for most of these groups to maintain their status.
Personally, I suspect the toxic and psychotic culture takes hold due to the use of lead. Lead poisoning is well known to cause psychosis and violence.
It has been suggested that the thing to do is to overwhelm the NRA's membership list (this is NOT hard) and throw out its entire leadership, restoring it to the sort of organization it was in the 1880s and getting Wayne LaPierre committed to a mental institution where he belongs. This would require organization, but I'd help.